Is It Right Time to Be Cautious on PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP), U.S. Bancorp (USB)?

The shares of PepsiCo, Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP) has been pegged with a rating of Underperform by Credit Suisse in its latest research note that was published on March 7th, 2019. Credit Suisse wasn’t the only research firm that published a report of PepsiCo, Inc., with other equities research analysts also giving their opinion on the stock. Macquarie advised investors in its research note published on February 19th, 2019, to Outperform the PEP stock while also putting a $126 price target. The stock had earned Neutral rating from UBS when it published its report on December 13th, 2018. That day the UBS set price target on the stock to $123. The stock was given Neutral rating by Macquarie in its report released on October 5th, 2018. Macquarie was of a view that PEP is Outperform in its latest report on September 28th, 2018 while giving it a price target of $122. Deutsche Bank thinks that PEP is worth Hold rating. This was contained in the firm’s report on July 3rd, 2018.

Amongst the analysts that rated the stock, 0 have recommended investors to sell it, 13 believe it has the potential for further growth, thus rating it as Hold while 4 advised investors to purchase the stock. The consensus currently stands at a Hold while its average price target is $117.75. The price of the stock the last time has raised by 20.11% from its Week high price while it is raised higher than its 52-Week low price. A look at the stock’s other technical shows that its 14-day RSI now stands at 53.70.

The shares of the company dipped by -0.75% during the trading session on Friday, reaching a low of $114.26 while ending the day at $115.23. During the trading session, a total of 4.96 million shares were traded which represents a 8.73% incline from the average session volume which is 5.44M shares. PEP had ended its last session trading at 116.10. PepsiCo, Inc. currently has a market cap of $163.08B, while its P/E ratio stands at 13.13, while its P/E earnings growth sits at 2.52, with a beta of 0.66. PepsiCo, Inc. debt-to-equity ratio currently stands at 2.23, while its quick ratio hovers at 0.80. PEP 52-week low price stands at $95.94 while its 52-week high price is $122.00.

The company in its last quarterly report recorded $1.49 earnings per share which is below the $1.49 predicted by most analysts. The PepsiCo, Inc. generated $19,524.00 million in revenue during the last quarter, which is slightly higher than the $19,518.80 million predicted by analysts. In the second quarter last year, the firm recorded $1.59 earnings per share. Compared to the same quarter last year, the firm’s revenue was down by -6.71%. PepsiCo, Inc. has the potential to record 8.78 EPS for the current fiscal year, according to equities analysts.

Investment analysts at Robert W. Baird published a research note on January 28th, 2019 where it informed investors and clients that U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) is now rated as Neutral. Macquarie also rated USB as Upgrade on February 19th, 2019, with its price target of $115 suggesting that USB could surge by 7.66% from its current share price. Even though the stock has been trading at $50.68/share, analysts expect it to surge higher by 0.37% to reach $55.09/share. It started the day trading at $50.91 and traded between $50.25 and $50.87 throughout the trading session.

A look at its technical shows that USB’s 50-day SMA is 49.79 while its 200-day SMA stands at 51.55. The stock has a high of $55.56 for the year while the low is $43.14. The company’s P/E ratio currently sits at 12.28, while the P/B ratio is 1.82. The company’s average trading volume currently stands at 7.72M shares, which means that the short-interest ratio is just 2.00 days. Over the past seven days, the company moved, with its shift of -1.64%. Looking further, the stock has dropped -3.29% over the past 90 days while it lost -6.37% over the last six months.

The change in the stock’s fortunes has led to several institutional investors altering their holdings of the stock. Berkshire Hathaway Inc bought more USB shares, increasing its portfolio by +3.51% during the last quarter. This move now sees Berkshire Hathaway Inc purchasing 4,385,739 shares in the last quarter, thus it now holds 129,308,831 shares of USB, with a total valuation of $6,615,439,794. The Vanguard Group Inc meanwhile sold more USB shares in the recently filed quarter, changing its stake to $5,733,818,443 worth of shares. BlackRock Fund Advisors followed the path by increasing its USB portfolio by +4.78% in the quarter. This means that BlackRock Fund Advisors bought 3,120,618 shares in the last quarter and now controls 68,398,940 shares of the USB stock, with the valuation hitting $3,499,289,770.

Similarly, Massachusetts Financial Services decreased its U.S. Bancorp shares by -1.26% during the recently filed quarter. After selling -512,559 shares in the last quarter, the firm now controls 40,047,703 shares of U.S. Bancorp which are valued at $2,048,840,485. In the same vein, T Rowe Price Associates Inc decreased its U.S. Bancorp shares by during the most recent reported quarter. The firm sold -11,661,189 shares during the quarter which decreased its stakes to 25,944,364 shares and is now valued at $1,327,313,662. Following these latest developments, around 0.10% of U.S. Bancorp stocks are owned by institutional investors and hedge funds.